Michel the Giant – Tété-Michel Kpomassie

Some people seem to be born to a life of adventure and Tété-Michel Kpomassie is certainly one. However, it would not be the adventurous life that his father and neighbours thought beckoned, when as a teenager in his native Togo he was marked out for initiation into the local snake cult. Instead, Kpomassie found himself enthralled by a library book about Greenland, and ran away to try to find a boat to take him to the cold of the north. It took him many years, but he eventually succeeded, embracing life there among the hunters and fishermen, the dogs and the snow. First published in French in 1977, this book is an account of his incredible journey and the draw of the exotic and unfamiliar.